As part of my movie watching for TGGeeks I’ve decided to take a look at movies for the LGBTQ community that have probably flown under most people’s radar, and this time I’m going to examine the 2007 gay-horror movie, The Raven. I love a good horror movie, and Edgar Allan Poe is one of the greatest horror authors of all time. So, when I saw that this movie was available on Here TV I immediately thought, what could go wrong? Sadly, after watching this movie that thought changed to, what didn’t go wrong???
Somewhere in England, some prep-school students are gathering for a party at a house that was infamous for death and murder. Two guys (presumably a gay couple) arrive early to help set up but sneak off to the bedroom for what ended being a very lengthy makeout and sex session. One of them goes downstairs and is murdered by a mysterious figure. The boyfriend hears a noise and when he goes to the bedroom door he is also slashed to death. Friends start showing up, including the host. He becomes promptly upset when he sees that the set up hasn’t been finished yet. Meanwhile, he is receiving some peculiar phone calls and text messages from someone quoting Poe’s titular poem. Others in the group start to receive them as well, and before the night is over they are all dead, including the host’s ex-boyfriend.
This movie is crap. Co-written and directed by David DeCoteau (Body Blow), The Raven tries to present itself as a horror/slasher movie, while also trying to be rather soft-porn like with numerous makeout sequences between early 20-something-year-old men. Sadly, the makeout scenes are the best part of this movie, and that’s not saying much. The acting is some of the worst I have ever seen with a cast that wouldn’t know proper acting if it hit them on the head. Most of them don’t have any other appearances outside of this trainwreck, and after watching this I can certainly understand why. The host of this deadly party is a character named Roderick and played by Rick Armando. He has only one screen credit and this is it. There wasn’t anything right about how he acted here, ranging from yelling to speaking in a halting manner as if couldn’t remember his next line. Nothing about him made any sense in terms of his actions and reactions. His performance became so bad I found myself craving for his character to be murdered. Sadly, the ex-boyfriend Drake, played by Traverse Le Goff was almost as bad. In a moment where he is supposed to be drunkenly angry and bent on revenge, what we got instead was an acting performance that bordered on laughable. In fact, out of the entire cast, there was only one who had some small amount of acting range and that would be Graeme Richards as Chandler, but playing a character who is a bit stuffy and proper didn’t allow for Richards to do anything with the character.
If you have any masochistic tendencies then you might enjoy this abomination. This is a movie that collectively has some of the worst acting imaginable as well as an absurd story that makes no sense whatsoever. The disappointment I felt when the big reveal finally occurs still has me scratching my head out of bewilderment. The story presents its reveal and then perpetuates a characteristic about the killer shown to us earlier in the movie that continues to call into question the legitimacy of that reveal. If there is anything positive about The Raven is that it does have some very good looking men in it, so at least I had that to enjoy, but the rest of this movie is truly some of the worst material ever written, filmed, and acted in. After watching this movie it makes me want to scream NEVER AGAIN!!!
For having virtually nothing redeemable about it I give The Raven 1 out of 5 Nevermores!!!
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